Venezuela recall clears hurdle, but no date for next step

Update:
August, 02/2016 - 09:00

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CARACAS—Venezuela’s opposition gathered enoughsignatures to proceed with efforts to call a referendum on removing President Nicolas Maduro, electoral authorities said Monday, without setting a date forthe next step.

The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, told apress conference Maduro’s opponents had cleared the threshold of 200,000 validsignatures on a petition demanding the leftist leader face a recall referendum.

The opposition blames Maduro for an economic crisis that has seen foodshortages, hyperinflation, violence and looting erupt in the once-booming oilgiant.

The council did not set a date for the next stage of the lengthy recallprocess, in which the opposition must collect four million signatures in justthree days.

In a boost to the Maduro camp’s claims of rampant fraud in the oppositionpetition drive, Lucena said the authorities had detected more than 1,000apparently falsified signatures.

The opposition submitted 1.8 million signatures in May calling for Maduroto face a recall, 1.3 million of which were accepted by the council.

Signatories then had to show up at electoral offices to validate theiridentity with fingerprint scans.

The threshold was one percent of the electorate, or roughly 200,000signatures, which the opposition cleared.

However, Lucena said more than 1,000 fingerprint scans did not correspondwith the signatory’s identity, more than 400 were repeats and nearly 200 peopletried to register more than once.

"The electoral authority will ask the state prosecutor’s office toinvestigate," she said.

Now that the electoral authorities have validated the initial recallpetition, the opposition will still have to collect another four millionsignatures in just three days.

To win the ensuing recall referendum, Maduro’s opponents would need morevotes than he won the presidency with in 2013 – around 7.5 million.

Time appears to be on the president’s side.

His allies have an arsenal of possible delaying strategies. They have filedmore than 8,000 legal challenges against the recall petition and called on theelectoral authorities to ban the opposition coalition behind the referendumpush for alleged fraud. — AFP